Gateway project will fail, planning prof warns

The whole theory that somehow the success of the port depends on the truckers is totally bogus. Yes, there are a few trucks at the port, but the vast majority of the freight that passes through Vancouver to and from the rest of North America does so on trains. The trucks are for the small amount of stuff that is for the local area – and that which is being resorted at places like the HBC distribution centre in Richmond. For most container traffic, the best distribution systems are designed to leave the container loaded and locked up between the shipper and its ultimate destination. That is how companies like WalMart make their money. But the vast majority of the tonnage handled by our port is bulk cargo – raw materials ripped from the ground and shipped abroad with little processing or value added. Way to grow, Canada!

The Port of Vancouver is one of the few international terminals I have observed that works five days a week, eight hours a day. If there was any real sense of urgency, or real need to deal with congestion – or get a decent rate of return on the capital employed in the large pieces of equipment like gantry cranes – it would be working 24/7. But drive down Deltaport Way on a Saturday or Sunday – it’s good for dyke walking and bird watching – and you will be charmed by the peace and quiet. No trucks! (And, by the way, the most efficient system we have – the tugs and barges moving bulk materials around the region on the river and across the Strait – do indeed work 24/7.)

The only reason for doubling the Port Mann is to make more room for single occupant vehicles. That might even work, if they didn’t at the same time insist on widening the approaches. Why they think there will be less congestion when the ratio of approach lanes to bridge lanes stays constant is beyond me! Instead of queues on four lanes we will have queues on eight. That’s twice the pollution, and twice the pressure on the rest of the road network that has to deal with the collection and distribution of the new trips generated by the project.

I once asked a MoTH person at a meeting of the ITE how many trucks on the Port Mann were headed for the Port. I didn’t get an answer.

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15 Responses

I have a funny feeling this isn’t the first time Gordon Price has condemned the Gateway project, particularly the twinning of the Port Mann bridge. It would be interesting to hear what Landry and Domass had to say about the need for additional capacity at Port Mann.

It is true that no competent economist has done a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis on the Gateway suite of projects. Neither have any of the fixed rail transit projects, such as RAV or the earlier Skytrain lines been properly assessed. No one has done a cost-benefit on the Evergreen line, and no one will, becuase BC politicians of all stripes, and at all levels, don’t want that analysis done. They don’t want documentation lying around that could be used to question the decisions they make, and that includes any NO BUILD decisions at least as much as any BUILD decisions.

Everyone knows that the real reason why Vancouver and Burnaby politicians are opposed to Gateway, especially Port Mann and Highway 1, has to do with property prices, and the distribution of the industrial and commercial tax base, coupled with a gut level phobia that animates even the least affluent of their voters. a stark fear of loss of status at some point in the future when there are more people living in Surrey and Langley than in Vancouver.

You state that the only reason for a second Port Mann bridge is to carry more single occupant vehicles. I find that very hard to believe given the congestion that exists there now. Expanded capacity is needed simply to carry the EXISTING VOLUME efficiently, as well as expanded commercial traffic. The Gateway Council, a business lobby group that includes tug and barge and railroad companies as well as trucking companies has identified improvements to Hwy 1, from Vancouver to Chilliwack, as their top infrastructure priority.

People in Vancouver can be incredibly insular and myopic. The traffic volumes at Port Mann right now are about 130,000 cars/trucks per day. That’s about the same volumes as on the busiest sections of Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail. But compare that to the 401 in Toronto, carrying on some sections as many as 450,000 to half a million cars and trucks per day, and you begin to realize that the Gordon Price/Bill Rees/Larry Frank/Patrick Condon/Peter Ladner/Colleen (Hardwick) Nystedt/David Cadman/Derek Corrigan/Kevin Potvin/David Chudnovsky/Shane Simpson/ etc., etc., meme that we have already built the hugest bridge in creation and cannot possibly be asked to expand it further is just a bit lame.

But it won’t carry just the existing volume. It will carry twice as much traffic, and just as inefficiently – if by that you mean “slow moving”. Because increasing capacity generates more trips – and that can be demonstrated by looking at any road capacity expansion plan in any growing metropolitan area.

And that is before the land uses change to adapt to the new capacity. And the 401 is not exactly what most people want to see here. And it is also proverbial for the congestion which clogs its multiple lanes, and which fills up just as fast as it is expanded.

There are far better alternatives to highway expansion and increased suburban sprawl. And that “meme” you speak of is actually the legally mandated regional growth strategy, which is incorporated in every municipal land use plan.

Experience shows that highway led growth is not sustainable, and will lead to further loss of land to development which currently is protected by legislation. Low density suburbs are no longer feasible in this region. We never did have enough space to accommodate the expected population growth in single family, single use, residential areas. We have long ago decided to build a Livable Region

In reply to your second post, I have seen and read parts of that report. It is not a full benefit-cost evaluation.

You make several false assertions in your first reply.

Because increasing capacity generates more trips – and that can be demonstrated by looking at any road capacity expansion plan in any growing metropolitan area.

If your argument is induced demand, a balanced assessment of the scientific literature (IOWs, an assessment not conducted by Gordon Price, or Eric Dohert, or David Fields, or Todd Littman) would show that pure induced demand effects can absorb some but not all of the increment in highway capacity.

And that is before the land uses change to adapt to the new capacity.

How does the construction of a new Port Mann Bridge alter the OCP of Surrey or Langley? It doesn’t. What Vancouverites are afraid of is that it means an earlier build out of those OCPs, thus threatening Vancouver’s political status and it’s pre-eminent share of the industrial and commercial tax base.

And that “meme” you speak of is actually the legally mandated regional growth strategy, which is incorporated in every municipal land use plan.

This is real silly stuff, and you know it. That LRSPlan was signed by two Mayors, Gordon Campbell and Gordon Hogg. Now you want people to accept this silly bugger exercise as some kind of immutable Holy Grail. How stupid do you think people are?

Experience shows that highway led growth is not sustainable, and will lead to further loss of land to development which currently is protected by legislation. Low density suburbs are no longer feasible in this region. We never did have enough space to accommodate the expected population growth in single family, single use, residential areas. We have long ago decided to build a Livable Region

The LRSP did not mandate Vancouver to increase densities along the LRT lines. Why aren’t all the blocks fronting on Cambie Street, and the next two blocks either side, being upzoned to 7 or 8 story apartments to take advantage of the $2 to $3 billion cost of the P3 RAV line? Because the game here is to produce high prices for even small apartments by abusing the local zoning power as a vicious supply side constraint.

The Evergreen Line was the subject of extensive and entirely objective studies. It is the closest we have come to a CBA here for many years, and is in stark contrast to the approach taken on the Canada Line and Millennium Line. CBAs are now not mandatory since Environmental Assessments (using mulitple criteria and eschewing monetary units of evaluation) have replaced them – at least in the legislated sense. Even so, in BC it more usual that no studies are done at all (e.g. fast ferries) or are so biased as to be worthless (Sea to Sky Highway). Indeed the only numerate comparative studies in recent years have been conducted by or for financial institutions as part of the P3 process – where the only benefit counted is rate of return on capital employed.

Induced demand will absorb capacity added to congested networks unless constrained by road prices. The regional transportation model does not take account of induced demand, and there is also no feedback loop between transportation capacity and land use which is taken as an exogenous variable. Road pricing is currently forbidden by the province’s road toiling strategy.

The LRSP was signed by all 21 municipalities and remains the mandatory Regional Growth Strategy. What is missing is any effective enforcement of its policies, as Bill Vanderzalm stripped the GVRD of its land use powers and no-one has thought to restore them. Municipalities must show that their OCP fits within the LRSP, but then proceed to make most land use decisions by OCP amendment over which their is neither regional nor provincial oversight.

The LRSP did not mandate any specific land use policies of the kind you discuss. It was deliberately written in vague language to allow for consensus among the municipalities. Even so, its main principles are generally clear, and well understood, and in terms of residential development largely achieved (and protecting the Green Zone) – so far. The real failure has been in commercial development, where highway oriented sprawl in both retail and office parks has generally defeated the strategy’s intentions.

“The Evergreen Line was the subject of extensive and entirely objective studies. It is the closest we have come to a CBA here for many years, …”

You may be right that it is the closest thing to it, but it’s not and does not pretend to be a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. It’s really just a comparative business case evaluating a half dozen or so alternative methods of doing essentially the same thing. I agree that BC has traditionally taken an unstudied approach to evaluating transportation options, and other projects too, and that approach continues today, with the governments refusing to do proper analyses and the critics responding in kind with purely emotional appeals.

As I said before, the idea that “induced demand” will aborb 100% of additional highway capacity is a complete misreading of the probable elasticities, and beggars belief. No one would suggest this in any other context, since increased highway lanes only reduce the time cost of travel by vehicle, and do not in any way affect the many other capital and operating costs. Does increased public transit capacity generate induced demand? What about increased capacity in the telephone or cable systems, or water and sewer lines? Do people really shower for 45 minutes at a time if the water pipes are larger? Do they flush their toilets more often if the sewer pipes are upgraded?

Port Mann will have a $2.50 toll and Golden Ears a toll of $3 or more. By any other name this is partial road pricing. WAC Bennett’s decision in the1960s to take the tolls off the major crossings in the Lower Mainland was the worst thing that ever happened to transportation planning in this province, and was done to win an election against the NDP and their union allies by appealing to working classs commuters.

I find it utterly hilarious that the GVRD is now recommending a study of a much more generalized system of road pricing, but of what road system? Perhaps they are thinking of the non-existant freeway system they have adamantly refused to build, and which they vehemently denounce others levels of government for building a few mostly unconnected sections of. This kind of adolescent foolishness is really too funny, even for an isolated and inward looking city like Vancouver to be taken seriously.

“The LRSP was signed by all 21 municipalities and remains the mandatory Regional Growth Strategy. What is missing is any effective enforcement of its policies, as Bill Vanderzalm stripped the GVRD of its land use powers and no-one has thought to restore them.”

The word “no-one” would appear to encompass Mike Harcourt, and Darlene Marzarri, as well as Glen Clark and Gordon Campbell, one of the 21 signatories or this so-called “plan”. Marzarri’s fake “Growth Management Act” was such a farce that when the GVRD suggested to Richmond that their OCP called for too much apartment population on the flood plain, Richmond simply told the GVRD to drop dead and that was that.

“The LRSP … was deliberately written in vague language to allow for consensus among the municipalities. Even so, its main principles are generally clear, and well understood, and in terms of residential development largely achieved … The real failure has been in commercial development, where highway oriented sprawl in both retail and office parks has generally defeated the strategy’s intentions.”

I think your use of the word “vague”, while not entirely inaccurate, is unduly polite. The LRSP is not a plan in any real sense, it’s a window dressing document, a propaganda piece. It never mentions prices, and therefore cannot be taken seriously. The real goal of local government in BC, especially in the GVRD, has been to increase property prices to benefit landowners large and small. Every other decision they make has to be interpreted in the light of that one, over-arching goal that is never explicity declared, for obvious reasons, but is always the single real purpose behind any local government policy.

Since when is it wrong for jobs to be located in the suburbs, instead of only in the CBD, if the goal is to reduce total commuting, as the LRSP claims it wants to do? Officially the complaint here has been that suburban job growth occurred in parts of suburban municipalities other than the designated town cores that were going to be served by transit. Of course there were no transit plans, only dreams. The real beef here is quite obvious, it’s coming from Vancouver and Burnaby politicians and bureaucrats who are simply worried sick that their relative share of the I/C tax base is slipping away from them even earlier than what they originally feared. That is one major reason why they are so violently opposed to Gateway and Port Mann, not because they see it providing an additional daily flow of workers into their municipalities, but because they fear the exact opposite, that the flow of industry and jobs will be outwards, not inwards.

The other reason of course is that they believe Gateway will result in a marginal incraese in suburban residential real estate prices and a small decrease in Vancouver/Burnaby residential prices. But when your most favoured consituents have a non-taxable capital gain in their principal residence that is worth a million dollars, losing just 10% of that amounts to $100,000. Vancouver and Burnaby politicians aren’t going to let their best voters be subjected to those kinds of punishing losses without an all-out fight to the finish.

I am sorry but you really do need to increase your knowledge of transport economics. I suggest you visit http://www.vtpi.org.

You need to understand that road pricing is not the same as a flat toll, and is not imposed to pay for new infrastructure but rather to control demand for existing facilities. Furthermore, if you really believe that demand for transport infrastructure works in the same way as the demand for sewers, then there is very little point in continuing this discussion. Very little transport is used for its own sake – though there are people who like to go for a drive or a ride on a train for entertainment. Most trips are for the pursuit of other objectives – the journey to work, or to visit a relative for example. Moreover, a number of trip purposes have substitutes. At one time banking required a trip: now it can be done on line. Going to the cinema was once a major trip generator, but has been greatly reduced by tv and home entertainment systems.

A congested system is evidence of supressed demand. Some trips are deterred by the expectation of excessive delays. Decongest a system, and you will release some of the pent up demand. And yes it works for transit systems as well as for roads. The higher levels of generalised cost on congested systems also promote behaviours such as trip chaining, which reduce when congestion is reduced. Anyone who has studied transportation systems will have noticed that new facilities encourage people to consider new destinations which were formerly considered out of reach. Indeed, if you make your living forecasting future transportation demand, estimating the extent of such new behaviour is a critical skill set.

If you reread what I wrote about office parks, I said that what was expected were multipurpose town centres. Indeed, the growth of residential population in the CBD may have gone too far, in that it has displaced office space (the conversion of the former West Coast Energy offices for example). Suburban office parks are car oriented, and do not encourage alternative transport choices and hence are not consistent with the LRSP.

I am not sure that I have ever seen a municipal land use plan that specifically addressed the issue of prices. Perhaps you could provide me with a reference to one that does.

“I am sorry but you really do need to increase your knowledge of transport economics. I suggest you visit http://www.vtpi.org.”

You’re refering me to Todd Littman’s site. Can I take this as an attempt at humour?

“You need to understand that road pricing is not the same as a flat toll, and is not imposed to pay for new infrastructure but rather to control demand for existing facilities.”

It may not be identical in that it does not vary with distance travelled exactly, but the deterrent effect on usage through increased costs to the consumer is roughly the same. I note that you want to make sure that any tolls that are collected are not used to increase highway/bridge capacity. Given that the gas tax in the Lower Mainland has already been diverted to public transit, this is not a politically tenable position. Motorists will demand that tolls be used to maintain existing bridges and tunnels and to eventually build new ones. That of course is the real reason why the so-called environmental groups in BC don’t support the reimposition of tolls on the major bridges. They don’t want the money raised to be used to build additional crossings, such as Indian Arm, or added tubes at Deas Island, in order to begin a suburban ring road comparable to Edmonton’s Anthony Henday Drive, or at least a three quarters ring road if we leave off the western or Georgia Straight side.

“Very little transport is used for its own sake – …. Most trips are for the pursuit of other objectives – the journey to work, or to visit a relative for example. “

I agree completely, the demand for transportation is a derived demand. It’s benefit then is not in the number of kiliometres travelled but in the purpose achieved, productive employment, consumption of social or recreational nature, etc.

“Suburban office parks are car oriented, and do not encourage alternative transport choices and hence are not consistent with the LRSP.”

So what if they don’t encourage transit usage? The West Side executive and managerial types do not take public transit to work in the downtown towers, nor do the North Shore types. With the execption of the ever diminishing numbers of secretarial and clerical employees, Vancouver’s downtown towers are filled with workers from the outer suburbs such as Surrey and Langley and Maple Ridge who actually do take public transit to work, and people from Vancouver, Burnaby, the North Shore and Richmond who mainly drive to work and consider it their right to do so in exchange for having paid a higher price for their house or apartment. Parking in downtown Vancouver is cheap compared to Calgary or Toronto, and downtown business interests are determined to keep it that way. That’s why their front organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation or Smart Growth BC will never advocate the imposition of a downtown congestion charge similar to what Mayor Ken Livingstone imposed in Greater London.

If someone who lives in Surrey or Langley and works in an office or industrial park there is driving to work, there is simply no real problem. It wouldn’t be practical for them to take public transit to work even if that job had been located in one of the official growth nodes, and it couldn’t possibly be located there if it’s an industrial rather than an office job. I should add that the implicit assumption that one is always talking about white collar office employment is part of the pompous fakery of Vancouver planning malarkey, driven as it is by the economic interests and social perceptions of the West Side and North Shore upper middle class.

The entire complaint against these suburban office parks is just a case of Vancouver and Burnaby sweating over their loosening grip on the industrial tax base. And they should be worried. StatCan figures show that between 1999 and 2005 Calgary fully displaced Vancouver in terms of head office employment. Vancouver’s head office jobs shrank from 17,000 to 12,000, while in Calgary the numbers rose from 12,000 to 19,000. (http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/060713/d060713b.htm). I wonder to what degree this displacement is due to Vancouver’s insular and perfectly silly anti-freeway policy?

“I am not sure that I have ever seen a municipal land use plan that specifically addressed the issue of prices. Perhaps you could provide me with a reference to one that does.”

I haven’t seen one that included prices either, but most municipal plans don’t pontificate about the supposed need for some people to live closer to their work so as to reduce commuting costs. The LRSP makes these demands on working class people without having the decency to state that higher housing prices in the closer in areas will make this extremely difficult. Nor does it provide any indication of how land prices can be altered in order to achieve this objective by means of market behaviour. As it stands, it is kind of like those old Soviet five year plans that talked on and on about the numbers of tons of stell to be produced, but wouldn’t discuss prices.

“You’re refering me to Todd Littman’s site. Can I take this as an attempt at humour?”

No. An attempt at education

“It may not be identical in that it does not vary with distance travelled exactly, but the deterrent effect on usage through increased costs to the consumer is roughly the same.”

Nonsense. It is not the same at all. A flat fee that does not vary does not shift travel to the off peak period.

“So what if they don’t encourage transit usage?”

I did not write that. I said provide increased choice – which is the LRSP policy. Have you something against choice? I would not advocate trying to increase transit use on a system that has no spare capacity until those capacity problems have been effectively addressed. And I will not advocate a downtown congestion charge since its main purpose was to divert through traffic to other routes: most of the cars in Central London did not need to be there – they were just driving through. The geography here is quite different.

Burnaby has lots of office parks. So much so that the additional office towers planned for Metrotown have yet to be built – and I doubt now that they will be. Vancouver made a deliberate choice to convert industrial land to residential use both in downtown and out at Joyce Station. The High Tech Office park proposed for False Creek Flats was an embarassing flop.

“perfectly silly anti-freeway policy”

What is perfectly silly is seeing what happened to nearly every US metropolitan area since the federal Highway Aid Act and expecting some different outcome here. US urbanists visit Vancouver all the time just to see how it’s done. And many cities around the world are now taking out their downtown freeways.

The people who have most benefited from the change of land use in downtown Vancouver are the people who can afford the expensive condos who also have jobs there. The lack of affordable housing is due to the withdrawal of governments at all levels – but mainly the feds – from low cost housing provision.

A land use plan is rather different in content and intent to a Soviet production plan – but I wouldn’t let that get in the way of a good rant if I were you.

“US urbanists visit Vancouver all the time just to see how it’s done. And many cities around the world are now taking out their downtown freeways”

This is pure Vancouverism mythology, not fact at all.

I notice you didn’t dispute my contention that the Vancouver real estate interests who disguise themselves as environmentalists and “urbanists” (what is that, anyway?) are opposed to the imposition of tolls on the major crossings and would vehemently opposed a congestion charge in downtown Vancouver.

In other words, the stated fear that Port Mann expansion will lead to more traffic on East 1st is just for public consumption. If that were the concern, a toll on vehicles taking the off ramp onto East 1st and Grandview and Hastings would be a consideration.

Of course, all those American academics and politicians that have been shown around by myself and others are pure figments of our collective imagination. Thank you for pointing that out.

I am giving up disputing your contentions. On the whole I prefer the “cock up” theory of history to the conspiracy – it seems to me to be much closer to my experience. And Vancouver Real Estate Interests are far too busy selling houses to cook up a cabal with the Republic of East Vancouver.

And the idea of congestion charging would certainly not be confined to open or two locations – it would have to be system wide to be effective with extensive traffic calming to prevent short cutting through residential neighbourhoods.

“Of course, all those American academics and politicians that have been shown around by myself and others are pure figments of our collective imagination. Thank you for pointing that out.”

People see what they want to see, never more so than in the case of people devoted to a cause whose rightness they accept as a matter of faith. And when that faith is backed up by the prospect of huge, non-taxable capital gains, the belief that everyone is coming to hear your message and see your vision is hard to resist.

BTW, how many of these visiting dignataries are involved in developing and selling urban residential real estate? And I did notice your new article celebrating the projection that housing prices in Canada will double in the next twenty years, a forecast that demographers like David Foote might not agree with.

I would just like to return to your previous post, in which you said:

“And many cities around the world are now taking out their downtown freeways.”

Is this statement, which implies that there are numerous instances, not in fact a reference to the solitary case of the Park East freeway in Milwaukee?

Apparently the intention is to redevelop the lands released from the transportation right of way, over and above that needed for the new six-lane surface boulevard, as condominium projects. I can see where Gordon Price and Bob Rennie and Stephen Rees would be very, very pleased with that.

Well that certainly seem to be the case with you. The only other people I have met who seem to be as resistant as you to reason are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Not one of the people who visited me were in the business of selling real estate. They were either academics in the fields of planning or engineering, politicians and policy advisers, some journalists and people working in transportation or regional planning. And you must be reading what you want to see if you think I am celebrating house price increases. CIBC were trying to contradict the demographers. I think that the appeal of this region will continue to attract people, but more importantly that the politicians will continue to respond first to those who are already here and want to preserve what they have. That means no change to the policies that have applied for the last twenty years. I even think that the idea of expanding the freeway will probably collapse under its own contradictions.

The cities that I was thinking of that have removed freeways were San Francisco and Toronto. But all you have to do is put the words “freeway removal” into Google to get 1.4 million pages of information. Happy Reading!

First off, I find it difficult to believe that these visitors are professors in fields like engineering. One or two may be impressed by Vancouver’s deliberately stunted transportation systems, but they would have to be people who are working for urban property developers.

“I think that the appeal of this region will continue to attract people, but more importantly that the politicians will continue to respond first to those who are already here and want to preserve what they have. That means no change to the policies that have applied for the last twenty years. I even think that the idea of expanding the freeway will probably collapse under its own contradictions.”

The expansion of the Trans Canada freeway already has run into intense political opposition from real estate interests who fear a more diverse and more competitive real estate market. That includes hundreds of thousands of homeowners who want their property prices to keep rising. That’s the political pressure that anti-freeway politicians in Vancouver and Burnaby are pandering to.

“The cities that I was thinking of that have removed freeways were San Francisco and Toronto. But all you have to do is put the words “freeway removal” into Google to get 1.4 million pages of information. Happy Reading!”

What freeway removal in Toronto are you talking about? In San Francisco, the removals of the Embarcedero and another short stretch were occasioned by the earthquake of about 15 years ago. For you to pretend that these isolated cases amounts to a general trend is really an exaggeration of such a degree as to border on intentional insincerity.

As for doing the Google thing, I typed in “freeway demolitions” and came across a paper titled “Freeway Deconstruction and Urban Regeneration in the United States”, by Robert Cervero, Professor and Chair Department of City and Regional Planning University of California, Berkeley:

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Who am I and what is this

I am a transportation economist and regional planner, displaced from England by the abolition of the Greater London Council and a dislike of Thatcherism. Until March of 2004 I worked for the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority on wide variety of policy issues. None of these have been solved since I left, and the region has abandoned its long established growth strategy altogether, as the province expanded its major highways and is now proposing another new bridge over the Fraser. I have long advocated more sensible policies to better integrate transport and land use. And this blog is a way to keep up the pressure! It also allows me to vent a bit on related issues.